Thoughts on Pain

She knelt next to the bed and laid her head in her mother’s lap. The cry coming from her was not the cry of a woman stretching to give birth to life.  It was a sound coming deep from within her broken and hurting soul.  I knelt behind her, heart pounding, breathing with the feeling of a ton of bricks on my chest.  I breathed the name of Jesus and willed myself steady as a lifeless body was born into my hands.

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Sirens blaring, bumpy roads…the seventeen year old girl trembled under my own unsteady hands. She came to us, but not in time. The cord that gave life, flowing with oxygen, gave way before birth to life could win. Furious with a world of medicine in a culture not my own, the managements calls left me helpless and small.  I ran from that small OB emergency room heaving and crying. My mind unable to grasp the horrific scene, my heart refusing to accept, and anger the only feeling I could find. 

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The door to the bathroom opened and she asked me, “Beth is this normal?” I looked to find the floor no longer white, but red.  I placed the Doppler on her round, swollen middle only to find the time between beats far too long. The slow beats became slower and I felt my soul being beaten again. We rushed her to the OR, but it was full. No room in the inn. She had no time to wait. Life inside her was no longer.

I left two years in the Philippines feeling emotionally behind, angry and unsure of how to handle the pain of these things and more. For fear of finding myself 10 years down the road and a total basket case of unresolved painful experiences and the emotions that go along with them, I took time to write, to process, to grieve.  It was good. I cried, grieved and moved on.  But in the back of my mind, I wondered if it would be enough.  Would it be enough for these hard things?  Would it be enough if I move to practice midwifery in a place where circumstances are different, risk of complications are higher, medical systems operate in a world all their own, and death is a common occurrence?  Could I walk through hard things and come out without feeling bitter, angry, confused and hardened? 

I’ve known and seen so little pain.  I’m sure there will be more.  I’ll probably grieve and be angry, but I’ve wanted something to grasp; some assurance that in the end I’ll still be sane, soft, compassionate, loving, and graceful.  Maybe what I have really wanted is a way to avoid the pain altogether.  

I ask the compassionate, loving, passionate, and gracious woman sitting across the room from me how she has done it all these years.  How has she seen so much, been witness to so much pain and yet still possess all the qualities I hope to retain in spite of what might come?  Her response…real. It’s raw in every way.  It’s not what I expected her to stay, but it strikes deep within me and I know she’s right.  

Her response, at least what I took from it, was something like this: We have to come to terms with the truth that God uses the pain in our lives.  Those who know and accept that God can use the pain we experience to teach us and shape us have a depth to them not everyone has.  We do have to grieve and move on, but until we accept that God can and does use the pain to change us and shape us, it’s difficult to move on.

Maybe it sounds a little cliché or too religious. My pain changes me for His Glory. I’ll be all nice and shiny, refined like gold, as one of my friends likes to say with a little sarcasm.  But I think the truth, the experience, and the heart behind her words pulled more weight for me as she answered the question that has been stirring in me for a long time now. Her answer was so real and vulnerable.  I think I’ve fought the acceptance of that truth…it’s such a messy thing. Does He cause pain? I don’t think so. Does God really use pain? Can He use the pain of this broken and messy world we live in? Yes, I think He can and does…now I have only to accept it.

Ann Voskamp writes it in such a striking way, “The only way to stop your heart from breaking is to stop your heart from loving. You always get to choose: either a hard heart or a broken heart. A broken heart is always the abundant heart — all those many beautiful pieces only evidence of an abundant life."